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Singapore Notes: White Washed Paper
White Washed Paper
The Population White Paper is really one piece of shoddy work. There's no bibliography, annotations or scholarly references cited to support it's preposterous arguments or constructs. Even if the authors were to package it with iPods, Mont Blanc pens or tailored shirts, no professor will give it a decent grade. It's fit for one purpose only. You are in the smallest room of the house, the paper is in front of you, then it's behind you. Don't forget to flush.
Seriously, anyone one can spot the white lies from Batam, Bintang or Johore Baru. Some snippets:
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The young couple who bought the $2m Executive Condominium had to rely on daddy's help to finance the purchase. A fresh graduate starting work will have to count on his parents' assistance to afford that $100K Certificate of Entilement. The old folks probably had to downgrade their HDB flat to send his child overseas because the place in the local university was taken up by an alien. Welcome to the new normal. Thanks to the high cost of living, the young can no longer support the old, the old is now forced to draw down on his life savings to keep the family unit intact.
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$400 million extra to encourage marriage and having children, $1.1 billion extra for more buses to accommodate the foreign hoards. Enuff said.
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The government imposes ethnic quotas for Chinese, Malays and Indians in its public housing estates, to ensure a good interracial mix in residential areas. There's no such restriction for masses of North Indians taking over the condominiums in the East Coast. "I'm told in Australia, Sydney, there's one area which is a Vietnamese village... All the Vietnamese mafias are in that area, you go in at your own risk. We have not allowed that to develop here." (LKY, Hard truths, page 272). The old coot obviously haven't ventured much out of Oxley Rise recently.
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If immigrants share ethnic backgrounds, the curry wars would not have erupted. LKY heard the confessions of one middle aged new citizen from China on 95.8 FM: "How can I assimilate? I try. But I eat different food, different cooking, my life habits are different. My children go to local schools, they'll become Singaporean naturally. But overnight, how can I change?" At least that guy was truthfully honest, unlike the ping pong player who scooted off with the medals and prize money, son in tow, before he reaches enlistment age.
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Having our toddlers speak Tagalog because of close proximity to the foreign domestic is not complementary to our skill set. We don't need another Alvin Tan ASEAN scholar to encourage bedroom innovations. The CNB, SCDF and NUS have enough problems in that area. Look at what happened to Michael Palmer. Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin has been in the country for quite some time now, are we any closer to a new social network start-up?
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This is the only honest bit of disclosure in the whole white wash. Except that the young are leaving not just for exciting and growing cities. They are leaving for countries where there's habitable living space, ample room for free expression, and money grabbing politicians can actually be voted out of office.
